I'm just intrigued..(this is to those who believe in evolution) In 10,000 years, what will humans look like?

Question

I just heard that people from the middle ages used to be much shorter than we are today. That's not very long ago. anywho.. just intrigued. What say you?

Answer 1

ppl are getting much shorter now every grade i noticed seems to get shorter in skool and its weird.
maybe we will be short and look like aliens.

Answer 2

The people from the middle ages were short due to poor nutrition. We just have more cheeseburgers than they do. They were also thinner, LOL. It's not a genetic difference.

Barring genetic engineering weirdness, people in 10,000 years will look about the same as they do today. It's likely that a greater proportion of people will have dark hair. *shrug*

Answer 3

Nik,
The middle ages were about 500-600 years ago. That's not enough time to make much difference from the perspective of evolution. The reason they were shorter - according to anthropologists - is that people back then had very poor nutrition. If you find cultures today that have very poor nutrition, you will find the same lack of height. If you don't feed a baby of a tall couple enough vitamins and minerals, it will stunt it's growth.

True evolution changes the genetic structure of a living being. Based on fossil evidence, scientists have determined that we have been basically the same for 100,000 years. Of course, there are several races, and a wide variety of people on the planet ranging from pygmies to polynesian sumo wrestlers, but, that by itself doesn't mean they are changing alot. It just means there's a variety on the planet.

Given that fact, there is no reason to expect that people will be very different 10,000 years from now - not based on evolution. However - breeding patterns are another story and will influence the appearance of some people.

Knowing that cultures and countries continue to blend as they have for a very long time, I predict that, aside from isolated populations, most people will be a medium tan in color. There is very little reason to expect that selective pressure will do anything at all for our level of intelligence or health. (If you aren't familiar with it, selective pressure is the reason many animals in the artic area are white - because the brown ones didn't live long enough to have babies because they stood out and got eaten). In fact, right now, it could be argued that we are devolving - that it's easier than ever for anyone to survive and thrive, regardless of their health level, intelligence, or ability to survive without help in any way whatsoever. Perhaps our level of intelligence will go down even. In fact, it's impossible to say. 10,000 years is so long that any comments I make here are only speculation. Nature and God have their own fish to fry and my guess is, it will be back to survival of the fittest at some point in that time span. Even so, I think most of us would be a medium tan in color, with brown or black hair. The reason I say this is: there are 6 billion people. About a billion of them are Chinese. They are brownish with black hair. About a billion of them are from India. Ditto on the hair and skin. That covers about a third of the earth's population. Now - Africa is around a billion all together. They have brown skin and black hair. You don't find very many blondes in South America either.

In fact, just about the only fair skinned people are in North America, Europe, and Australia. The US is around 300 million. Canada is roughly a third of that. Europe has about 700 mil. Russia is only about 150 mil. Australia is negligible in terms of the world at only 21 million.

Not everyone in these countries is even fair skinned. Have you ever been to Romania? Ukraine? Italy? I haven't, but I know they've got alot of dark hair and good tans.

Bottom line - only about 1/6 th of the world is even fair skinned in the first place. With our abilities to travel and immigration occuring worldwide all around due to airplanes and cars, there's no reason to expect that any large groups of fair skinned people will exist in 10,000 years. A huge percentage of the population of the earth has no access to electricity. Only a tiny fraction have access to a computer. Throughout the third world - disease is rampant. We have no idea if this situation will be that different or if we will all lift ourselves up and be all star trek like, or - if we will world wars and fall back into the stone age. The reason to mention that part is, that from what it looks like right now, there's little reason to expect that technology will play a major role compared to the other influences that I mentioned above.

For the record - I don't intend any of this to be racial in nature. I try not to be in any way. I'm just pointing out some basic scientific reasoning.

- Kevin

ps. For the record - I read Dan's answer after I hit submit on mine and don't disagree with any point he made. It was very well put and I would say "ditto" in spite of my comments about technology. Most importantly, this is a big wide world, and 10000 years is a dang long time. All we can do is speculate at this point.

Answer 4

Well, it is true that we are taller then average people of the past. mainly due to better diet.

But, evolution depends on nurture and nature.
By way we are being nurtured, I'd say our future generations will be honor-less curs with out manners and respect and brain capacity of wild donkey on heat that seeks meaningless violence.

While our physical attributes would be more lean muscle, slightly taller, most populations will probably have brown eyes. red heads will probably be considered endangered species.

Yea... that's about it...

Answer 5

The 10.000 thousand years ago--they looked as we do today-i bet you -10,000 years from now they look the same as use-there might be computer stuff in some to give longer life--and people on different planets--might look different--but the [Conventionalist's] i bet they look just like you-HUmans just don't havent changed that much--

Answer 6

Who said humans will even exist in 10,000 years? But if they did...it would depend on a lot of factors. How the earth looks, climate, nutrition, perhaps humans will have gills.

Answer 7

my biology teacher told me they will have a lot of hair to combat against pollution. more hair in your nose to prevent polluted air from coming in. but i personally think we would have less hair bc of global warming and how the world would be too damn hot to live in.
maybe a lot of similar looking people since genetically modified humans will be widespread and probably legal by then. WERE ALL GOING TO LOOK THE SAME!

Answer 8

Humans appear to be driven by sexual selection. So what the average person deems attractive, that's what will drive the phenotype and genotype of the future. Assuming of course, that our stupidity doesn't cause us to destroy ourselves before then.

Answer 9

Bigger (in terms of both height and "width" since we eat more protein and fat compared to our ancestors) and smarter (unless you watch a lot of tv).
Unless there's some evolutionary pressure that allows women to successfully give birth that way, I doubt we'll have those large bulging heads (for ginourmous brains) as depicted in sci-fi.

Answer 10

I'd say they will be even bigger, less hair and higher intelligence. That seems to be the trend anyway. Maybe I'm just optimistic.